World War: Rescue in a Fjord

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The Cossack's second-in-command, Lieut.-Commander Bradwell Talbot Turner leapt over the railings at the head of a boarding party, brandishing his revolver, shouting "Follow me!" He knocked aside a Nazi guard, dashed to the bridge and signaled full speed astern, ramming the Altmark firmly on rocks under the fjord's wall. As Lieut.-Commander Turner burst into the Nazi Captain's cabin, a revolver fixed as a booby trap exploded, wounding him in the arm.

The fjord now rang with lively gunfire. Five Nazis fell dead, five were wounded (two fatally). Some of the Germans swarmed overside, got up on the cliff and shot back at the British, who potted two Nazis running over the ice. Bullets whizzed through the little fishing village of Joesinghavn. Some of the Nazis, surprised in their nightclothes, didn't stop running till they were ten miles away. Those remaining on the Altmark surrendered.

The boarding party attacked heavy chains and cables which fastened down the Altmark' s hatches. Wrenching off the covers, they called: "Are there any British down there?" Up to the deck and over onto the Cossack scrambled 326 survivors of the Ashlea, Newton Beech, Huntsman, Africa Shell, Trevanion, Doric Star, Tairoa. They were haggard, tattered, bearded, verminous. Some had stomach ulcers from the scrawny diet — mostly black bread and tea — on which they had lived since as long ago as early December.

One had leprosy. They said they had stopped at Bergen and had tried to make the Norwegian inspectors hear them by shouting, banging on the ship's sides, shoving a Union Jack out through a crack. Nobody else said they had stopped at Ber gen. After they entered Joesing Fjord, their captors set a time bomb in the prisoners' quarters which might have destroyed them had help not come when it did.

The Cossack took no Nazis prisoner but steamed at once out of Joesing Fjord, across the North Sea to Leith, Scotland. Airplane escorts which flew out to meet her averted disaster by spotting four mines in her path. Ovations and ambu lances awaited the rescued men, Admiralty plaudits their rescuers. Then came the repercussions of as fine a night's work as the British Navy could ask.

In Oslo, Premier Johan Nygaardsvold of Norway was on as hot a spot as any neutral statesman could imagine. Ger many was foaming at the mouth, demand ing to know why Norway had not resisted Britain's "criminal," "bestial" raid inside her waters. Mr. Nygaardsvold protested in person to the British Minister, but in London, Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax did not even wait to hear from Oslo. He demanded to know why Norway had failed to discover that the Altmark carried pris oners and was armed with two pom-pom guns, four machine guns !